I recently came across an interesting games monetization report by Gamesbeat. If you are not familiar with this publication, it’s part of Venturebeat and is certainly one of the top publications for the video game industry. The report is based on a survey with 176 game developers both big and small and compared their choices for monetization. The main benefit of purchasing the report is understanding what the successful games do differently. Here are some of the highlights (free of charge):

Video wins advertising

The report clearly shows the dominance of video ads as the weapon of choice for successful publishers. When comparing the success rate of over 1,000 games made by the surveyed developers and figuring out the ad providers recommended by the most successful publishers, Vungle and Adcolony had the upper hand.

In-app purchases is still the main revenue source

While this is far from being news these days, the report confirms the dominance of IAP as the main revenue source for all successful games. It is being used by about 50% of all the games but over 95% of successful games choose it as their main monetization strategy.

Successful publishers pulling out of Google Play

While google play represents the biggest audience these days and have presented stronger App Store revenue growth during 2013, the survey did find that successful publishers are focusing on iOS these days. This should be a big warning sign for Google if they want to stay in the game. The history of the gaming industry shows that attracting premium content has been one of the main keys to success in both the console and the portable devices gaming markets.

Incentivized is the least annoying ad format

The publication also released some interesting data about how different ad formats are perceived by the users. As game developers, we want to keep our users engaged and pleased and advertising is doing the opposite so the goal is to find the least annoying format. According to the data presented, Offer walls are the best ad formats for keeping your users happy.